Various embodiments described herein relate to methods for manufacturing microelectronic devices, and more particularly, to methods for forming fine patterns in microelectronic devices such as memory devices.
Microelectronic devices can include fine patterns therein to form highly integrated circuits (IC). Patterns in a microelectronic device may be formed by forming a photoresist pattern on a target layer and etching the target layer using the photoresist pattern as an etch mask.
As the design rules of microelectronic devices decrease sharply and the integration density continues to increase, the aspect ratio of a photoresist pattern may increase, so that collapse of photoresist patterns may occur. In order to allow interconnection lines to have a fine linewidth while reducing or preventing the collapse of the photoresist patterns, the thickness of the photoresist patterns may be decreased. However, as the photoresist patterns become thinner, the photoresist patterns may not function well as a mask to form fine patterns having a high aspect ratio. Even the use of hard masks have not eliminated this problem.